I know it's peculiar to mourn a complete stranger, but i find myself very sad today at the news of David Foster Wallace's suicide. If you're not familiar with his writing, you should be. But it's not just that he was a significant writer. To me he was a symbol of success for a way of thinking that was intelligent, broadly curious, and never intellectually satisfied. He was funny and human but never simple. He was the sort of person i would like to be. To think that even he could not cope is profoundly depressing.
If you don't know his work, start with A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. It's one of my favorite non-fiction books, and probably my favorite book title ever. This is a collection of essays, but the title essay is the real payoff.
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